DiaBLOGue

The Spalding Theory Then and Now

April 25, 2018

Late in the summer of 1833 one Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, recently excommunicated from the Mormon church for “unchristianlike” conduct toward some of the sisters,[1] learned of a manuscript written some twenty years before by the late Reverend Solomon Spalding which was similar to the Book of Mormon. His interest piqued, he set out to investigate this story, principally through interviews with former residents of Conneaut, Ohio, where Spalding once had lived.

The “Brass Plates” and Biblical Scholarship

April 25, 2018

One of the notable intellectual activities of the 19th and early 20th centuries was development of the view that the Old Testament was a composite of ancient documents of varied age and source. Although the…

Textual Variants in Book of Mormon Manuscripts

April 25, 2018

Dialogue 10.4 (Winter 1977): 10–45
A great value of these early manuscripts is that for the most part they substantiate the correctness of the present Book of Mormon text—fully 99.9% of the text is published correctly. In textual criticism, however, evidence should be weighed, not counted, since a unique reading in a reliable source may be better than any number of readings in less reliable sources.

Militant Mormon | Samuel W. Taylor, The Kingdom or Nothing: The Life of John Taylor, Militant Mormon

April 25, 2018

The publication of two biographies of major figures in Mormon history within a year is no small event. That both Donna Hill’s Joseph Smith (Doubleday, 1977) and Samuel W. Taylor’s Life of John Taylor have…

It Bears the Arrington Hallmark | Leonard J. Arrington, From Quaker to Latter-day Saint: Bishop Edwin D. Woolley

April 25, 2018

From Quaker to Latter-day Saint is an unfortunate title. Neither interesting nor particularly descriptive, it combines with the design and size of the volume to suggest one of those wearying biographies of a minor figure…

Timing, Context and Charisma | Ronald L. Numbers, Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White

April 25, 2018

Seldom does the motivation for a book begin with a serendipitous finding. Such, however, was the case for this partial biography of Ellen G. White, the founder of Seventh Day Adventism. The author, a specialist…

The Hill Version of the Prophet’s Life | Donna Hill, Joseph Smith, the First Mormon

April 25, 2018

Prospective Latter-day Saint readers of Donna Hill’s biography of Joseph Smith will want to know two things: Is there anything new, and is it sympathetic to the Prophet? The answer to both questions is definitely…

Provoans | Douglas H. Thayer, “Under the Cottonwoods” and Other Mormon Stories

April 25, 2018

Little of the Mormon fiction published thus far has dealt significantly with the central issues of Latter-day Saint religious life. On the one hand there is the propagandistic fiction, found chiefly in the church magazines,…

Gambit in the Throbs of a Ten-Year-Old Swamp: Confessions of a Dialogue Intern

April 25, 2018

How does an English graduate student who wants a visit to the East Coast, instruction in the American political system and an introduction into the Mormon publishing world satisfy these three ambitions in one two-month…

The Rise and Fall of Courage, an Independent RLDS Journal

April 25, 2018

Dialogue 11.1 (Spring 1978): 115–119
Although Courage struck a responsive chord in quite a few hearts, its readers did not support it to the extent the editors had expected. Appealing only to a minority in a small church, and without either sufficient subscribers or a financial “angel/ Courage died after its eleventh number (Winter/Spring 1973).